Have You Heard?

“Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran is out of pocket for a sum of nearly USD$400,000 after she was successfully attacked by email scammers back in February. 

For those not familiar, “Shark Tank” is the American version of the popular British show “Dragons’ Den”. The premise of the show offers entrepreneurs the chance to present their business ideas to a panel of five wealthy investors - “Dragons” or “Sharks” - for financial investment in return for a share of their business. 

The scam started when an email chain was forwarded on to Barbara’s bookkeeper that appeared to be sent from Barbara’s executive assistant. The email informed Christine that she had the approval to pay a German company USD$388,700.11. 

Problem was - the email was not from Barbara’s assistant. 

The scammers had modified the assistant’s email address slightly by removing one letter, so they were actually the one’s communicating with Christine the bookkeeper. To her credit, Christine asked the right questions – such as what the money was for – and got a response saying the German company was designing apartment units that Barbara had invested in. 

This is a great example of the cover story’s scammers come up with. They had clearly done their homework and found out that Barbara does invest in real estate, and the company they were impersonating does exist in Germany. Plus, it looks more legitimate with the email apparently coming from Barbara’s assistant. 

Long story short the bookkeeper sends the payment to the account listed in the original message and then emails Barbara’s assistant – at her real email address – to advise it was completed. At which point the assistant has discovered the scam by realising her email address was altered on the previous email chain. 

Unfortunately, the money was well and truly gone with the original scam emails being traced back to a Chinese IP address. 

This story just goes to illustrate that even ‘Sharks’ can easily fall victim to scammers, and your business is just as easily at risk. 

Computer Culture can help with mitigating the risks and fallout from such an event happening. Contact our friendly sales team today to find out more.